Regular readers here will know that I am a huge supporter of Barack Obama, no questions about it. Needless to say this stupid twisting of his “Bitter Comments” have been driving me nuts. For the longest time I couldn’t quite figure out why.
Sure it seems stupid for two people (John McCain and Hillary Clinton), who are multi-multi-millionaires to call someone who worked with his way out of poverty in Chicago as “out of touch”, but that wasn’t quite it.
I thought for a while it may be the fact that Obama is the only one to raise money only from the voters, and not for the lobbyists. Surely that makes him more in touch than any other candidate right? Somehow that didn’t seem to explain it away.
Maybe it’s because this isn’t half the gaffe that Clinton’s “Sniper Fire” was. She lied many times about being shot at and claims that she was “over tired and misspoke”. Yet she won’t let Obama misspeak on something once? Interesting, but it doesn’t quite quell my rage on the subject.
What really bothers me is something much more simple than that. It’s the math. The only conceivable way for Clinton to beat Obama is to have the Superdelegates to vote against both the seated delegates and the popular vote and side with her over Obama. Just a refresher on Superdelegates, they are the party’s elite members who can vote on whoever they want, and are not tied to any public votes.
That’s right, Hillary Clinton’s only conceivable hope to defeat this “elitist” Barack Obama is to pander to the party’s elite and have them overturn the will of the public. Yes, she needs the elite to defeat the “elitist”.
Mrs. Clinton, I think that the pot is on the other line, apparently it’s calling you black.
I find it fitting that I go from dedicating 8 straight posts about professional wrestling to talking about U.S. Politics. At the end of the day, the two are really not all that different. Both have very compelling storylines, interesting characters, major players provide stunning turns at the most opportune of moments, and are masked with “smoke and mirror” techniques aimed at guarding the truth.
Don’t believe me? Well last month Randy Orton tried to so hard to prove that he belonged in the Main Event, which appeared to be all about Triple H and John Cena, in the end, he was able to win after his two opponents beat one another up. Can we say the same about John McCain proving his worth as a legitimate contender after all of the focus has been on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?
Also, which do you think was closer to the truth, Floyd Mayweather getting $20 million for his match at Wrestlemania, or Hillary getting shot by snipers when she landed in Bosnia? And don’t even get me started on Clinton’s stance on the Iraq War, that was a clear attempt at her pulling off a “double turn”, but like everyone of them in wrestling since Hart-Austin, they have all failed miserably.
In wrestling there is usually a clear cut good guy, or face. The face does the right thing, no matter what the odds seem to be. Well, for the first time in my lifetime, I genuinely feel that there is a face in the political arena, Barack Obama.
It’s been a while since I have done a “Why I Love” style post, but I firmly believe that there are a number of reasons why he is the right choice, not only for America, but for the world as a whole.
1. He was Against the War from the Start — He knew from the get go the harsh realities of the Iraq War, and voted against a war that he knew would destabilize the region, build up anti-American sentiment, and lead to a long and bloody occupation. Can’t really say the same about Hillary now can we?
2. Re-branding – I read a fantastic article by Andrew Sullivan in The Atlantic, titled “Goodbye to All That“, where he talks about his love of Barack Obama. One of his points really hit home to me, he mentions Obama as someone who can change America’s “Brand” to the world. He stated the following:
“Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.”
Simply put, Obama’s multi-cultural nature is one his best things going for him. It sure would be a lot harder for people to burn images and effigies of Barack Obama than it would be of George Bush, and that can really only help things at this point.
3. Courage – Barack Obama dumbfounds me with the amount of courage he shows. Do you think that Hillary Clinton or John McCain would have the guts to say that racism still exists in the United States and that African-Americans need to stop blaming whites for their own problems?
If you haven’t seen his “A More Perfect Union” speech, dedicate the next 37 minutes of your life to this YouTube clip.
Amazing eh?
4. He Rarely Plays the Race Card — Sure he mentions his own ethnicity when delivering the above speech, but rarely throughout the campaign has he brought up the fact that he is black. It’s refreshing, especially when compared to Clinton’s earlier stunts where she reminded everyone that she’s a woman.
5. He knows the Battle Lines –To me, this is by far the biggest pro for Barack Obama. One of his key points has been about political lobbyists and his insistence on not letting them run Washington. This my friends, marks the first major shot in the political battlefield of the 21st century. So much of the 20th century was about drawing lines and trenching in, from Democrat-Republican, liberal-conservative, Evangelical-secular, capitalist-communist, and well things are different now, and Obama is the only one who has mentioned the new line, Corporatism-Individualism.
People have spent so long debating things like abortion and same-sex marriage, they have lost sight of the new form of control and major issue taking place in the world today. Corporations have been slowly gaining an incredible amount of power thanks to bodies like the WTO, and a variety of government policies.
I am not so naive to think that Obama can dismantle the dizzying clout that major corpotation have in a capitalist system, but he is the only major candidate (note: Ralph Nader doesn’t count as major) to even mention this issue. While everyone is well aware that the nature of war has changed, everyone seems to think that the antagonists have shifted from communists to terrorists, and that simply is not the case. As I said back in January, the new wars are going to be about The Individual vs. The Collective, and right now the Corporations are the Collective, and Barack Obama is the champion of The Individuals.
6. I Want to Believe — I’m sure Obama has his faults, but for some reason I just can’t help but get caught up in this Obama-mania, I feel that he is someone different, which is what we all need, so very, very badly.
Last time, at Getting Glenergized, we unveiled a strange plot involving Afghanistan, September 11th, and a host of lies. It turns out that Mahoud Ahmad, the former head of the ISI (the Pakistani Secret Service) was having breakfast on September 11th, 2001 with two US Congressmen (who would later conclude that George Bush did no wrong in preventing the attacks) when the attacks took place. It was later revealed, to the ignorance of much of the Western World, that this same Mahoud Ahmad, transfered $100,000 one of the hijackers who completed the attack. However, he didn’t transfer the money himself, he did it through an intermediary, Ohmar Sheikh, who has a long history of being involved with terrorist actions, including the murder of Daniel Pearl. We looked at some reports of Bin Laden’s possible death in December 2001, and an interview with Benazir Bhutto, that left a startling revelation.
If you fast forward that video-clip to 2:14, Bhutto is stating people that she felt were trying to kill her and she says “Ohmar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden”.
In my haste to get this posted, I forgot to add two one very crucial event to our time line.
April 26, 2002: In an interview with Robert Burns, Donald Rumsfeld says “We’re hunting [Osama Bin Laden] down,” he said. “We’re tracking him down. He’s hiding. We haven’t heard hide nor hair of him for about, oh, since December, in terms of anything hard.”
September 22, 2004 to May 5, 2006: Porter Goss, one of the men who was having breakfast with Mahmoud Ahmad during the September 11 terrorist attacks (and later cosponsor of the Patriot Act) serves as the director of the CIA.
Now we are ready to fast forward to 2007, Bhutto’s return to Pakistan, and subsequent assassination.
October, 2007: US Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice telephones Bhutto in Dubai, and helps broker a deal for Bhutto’s safe return to Pakistan. Bhutto agrees to not protest Musharraf’s re-election as President, so long as Washington promises to hold Musharraf to his promise to hold free and fair elections. Rice says that she will see this through.
October 16, 2007: Bhutto writes a letter to Musharraf naming four people she believes to be involved in an alleged plot to kill her. These included the current Intelligence Bureau (IB) Chief Ijaz Shah, former chief minister of Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, former chief minister of Sindh Arbab Ghulam Rahim, and the former ISI chief, Hamid Gul, as those who posed a threat to her life, all of which are connected to Musharraf.
October 18, 2007: Benazir Bhutto returns to Pakistan.
Two suicide-bombers set off blasts at the airport where she lands. The detonations kill 136 people and injure approximately 450. Bhutto leaves unharmed.
November 2, 2007: Bhutto gives the interview with David Frost (embedded clip above) when she talks about people trying to kill her. She states:
“One of them is a very key figure in security. He’s a former military officer. He’s someone that has had dealings with Jaish a Mohammad, one of the band groups of Maulana Azhar, who was in an Indian jail for decapitating 3 British tourists and 3 American tourists, and he also had dealings with Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama Bin Laden.
Now I know that dealings with people does not necessarily mean direct evidence, but I also know that internal security has totally collapsed in Pakistan, and that internal security cannot collapse without there being some blind eye, if not collusion, being turned towards the rise of the militants and militancy.”
November 3, 2007: Musharraf declares a state of emergency, due to the actions of the Supreme Court and religious extremists. The constitution is temporarily suspended. Bhutto, states that if the state of emergency is not lifted that free and fair elections will be difficult, if not impossible. She says “The extremists need a dictatorship, and dictatorship needs extremists.”
November 8, 2007: As Bhutto prepares for a rally to oppose the state of emergency, she is taken under police custody and placed under house arrest.
November 9, 2007: The house arrest is lifted.
November 30, 2007: Musharraf gets sworn in as a civilian President, promises to lift the state of emergency by December 16.
December 15, 2007: State of Emergency is lifted. December 27, 2007: After leaving a political rally in Rawlapindi, Bhutto stands through the sunroof of her bulletproof car to wave to supporters. A man, standing very close to her car (pictured and circled to the right), fires a number of shots at her. Shortly thereafter, a bomb is detonated, killing at least 20 people. Bhutto is rushed to the hospital, but dies later that day.
December 28, 2007: Pakistan’s interior minister, stated that Bhutto was not killed by gunshots, but died from a skull fracture when she tried to duck into the car, and struck her head on the lever for the sunroof, and that she had suffered no bullet or shrapnel wounds. This directly contradicted the initial hospital report. Bhutto’s lawyer disputes the claims made by the government as does Toyota (the makers of the car that Bhutto was in) as they state that it was an impossible scenario, given the design of the car.
One anonymous doctor, states that the Pakistani Government took Bhutto’s medical records, and urged them all to stay quiet on the subject.
December 30, 2007: Scotland on Sunday, a British newspaper cites sources in the British Secret Service, who claim that forces in the ISI were responsible for Bhutto’s death.
So here we are now three weeks later, and still trying to fit the puzzle together. The Pakistani government is claiming that Al-Qaeda is responsible for the murder, but opposition leaders are very insistent that the Musharraf government is somehow involved.
If you remember, from her interview, Bhutto stated that someone out to get her was a “key figure in security” and a “former military officer”, who had links to Ohmar Sheikh. Connecting the dots, ever so slightly we can see that she could very well be referring to Mahoud Ahmad, he himself a former general, and head of the ISI. Who used Sheikh as an intermediary for transferring funds to a 9/11 Hijacker. Also, it should be worth pointing out that the city Bhutto was killed in, Rawlapindi, was the very city that Ahmad served as military commander in. Obviously he would have quite a bit of contacts in the region.
The motivation for Ahmad and Sheikh, seems apparent enough. Bhutto opposed terrorists, and those who financed terrorism. Sheikh was himself a terrorist, and Ahmad helped finance one. Makes sense, does it not?
If Ahmad was somehow culpable, what are we to make of his connection with the CIA? Remember, he had meetings with Porter Goss, when he was a congressman on 9/11, and Goss would go on to become the director of the CIA. What are we to make of that?
Also worth noting, is that very night she was killed, Bhutto was scheduled to have a meeting with two US Senators, Patrick Kennedy and Arlen Spector. According to Spector, they were going to discuss “…our concerns are about what is happening here, the stability; what’s happening with the supreme court; what’s happening with our fight against terrorism, our efforts to capture Osama Bin Laden; and what is happening to the very substantial funding the United States has put in here…“
Can we notice that Spector mentioned the efforts to capture Bin Laden? This coming a mere six weeks after Bhutto states in an interview that Bin Laden has been murdered. Could she have had some proof that he was dead to share with the Senators? Could Kennedy and Spector, both of which have been very critical of the Bush Administration, have taken this information back to Washington, leaving the powers that be in political hot water?
Lastly, why does the Pakistani government seem so dead set on hiding Bhutto’s official cause of death? What could anyone in the government possibly have to gain from lying about this?
Sadly, I sit here, leaving only questions, and no answers. I am just a guy on his computer, and I can’t find out too much, but I’m sure someone out there will be able to find a bit more if they only look. It’s apparent here to me, that something really sinister is going on, and we are all getting taken along for a ride.
As horrible as it is that Bhutto was killed, and a country has been totally destabilized, I fear that there is a more tragic victim, the truth.
So it’s been a solid 3 weeks since the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. As the time has passed on there has been a great deal of information surfacing. After a little bit of research, inspired by one of my favourite political blogs, Little Country Lost, I have come to some pretty startling conclusions.
I think that the easiest way to present this is to list the events chronologically, and not by topic. I am sorry if this is confusing, but I swear, like an episode of Lost all of the pieces will fit together, and it will leave far more questions than answers. Today I am going to give the back story that leads
Our principal characters are:
Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf, current President of Pakistan Osama bin Laden, September 11th Mastermind Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11th hijackers Mahmoud Ahmad, former head of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA Ohmar Sheikh, British-born terrorist of Pakistani descent Condolezza Rice, current US Secretary of State George W. Bush…hopefully you know that name… Daniel Pearl, American journalist Porter Gross, Republican Congressman, and co-head of the Joint 9/11 Intelligence Inquiry Bob Grahme, Democratic Senator, other half of the above Intelligence Inquiry
1994: Ohmar Sheikh kidnaps three British and one American traveler and is sentenced to jail in New Delhi, India.
1996: Benazir Bhutto is removed from office as Prime Minister of Pakistan on charges of corruption.
1998: Bhutto flees Pakistan, and moves to Dubai on self-imposed exile.
October, 1999: General Musharraf leads military coup of Pakistan. Establishes Mahmoud Ahmad as the head of the ISI. Ahmad had been serving as the corps commander for Rawalpindi (remember that place, it’ll be important later)
December, 1999: Indian Airlines Flight 814 is hijacked and all of the passengers are taken hostages only to be released in exchange for three convicted terrorists, including Ohmar Sheikh. The four hijackers are late revealed to all be Pakistani nationals with links to the ISI.
November, 2000: George W. Bush wins his first term in office…sort of….
September 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden masterminds major terrorist attacks as 19 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta, commander four passenger flights and crash them into the two World Trade Centre Towers, the Pentagon, and one crash lands in Pennsylvania.
While the first plane (flown by Atta) strikes the North Tower, Mahmoud Ahmad, ISI director, is having breakfast in Washington D.C., with Republican Congressman, Porter Gross, and Democratic Senator Bob Grahme, as they discuss Osama bin Laden. Ahmad is quickly brought into meetings with US officials, who demanded Pakistani cooperation in the ensuing investigation.
September 17, 2001: George Bush states that he wants Osama bin Laden “Dead or Alive“.
October 7, 2001: Mahmoud Ahmad steps down as ISI director in the face of US pressure, after it is reported that he ordered Ohmar Sheikh to transfer $100,000 US to accounts owned by hijacker, Mohammed Atta. The story goes widely unreported in Western countries.
The United States leads an invasion of Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden and depose the Taliban.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I told you that this was complicated, trust me, we’ll be getting back to Bhutto in a bit, this will all become very clear soon.
November 17, 2001: Allied forces begin battle of Tora Bora, were they believe to have Osama bin Laden cornered.
January 23, 2002: American journalist, Daniel Pearl, is kidnapped in Pakistan.
February 2002: Porter Gross and Bob Grahme begin their work as co-heads of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.
February 21, 2002: A video titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl, is released, showing Daniel Pearl’s dead body.
March 21, 2002: Ohmar Sheikh is arrested as the supposed mastermind beyond the Pearl kidnapping and killing.
April 4, 2002: The US Joint Chief of Staff says “The goal was never to get bin Laden”. Signaling a startling shift in the Bush Administrations language with respect to bin Laden.
July 15, 2002: Sheikh is sentenced to death for his role in the Pearl murder, a decision which has been appealed and subsequent hearings are delayed. No final date has been set for his trial.
December, 2002: Porter, Goss and co. release their report outlining what could have been done differently to prevent the terrorist attacks, however they accept the White House’s ruling to not mention anything that the President did or did not know prior to the attacks, stating that it is classified information.
So here we are 5 years ago, ready to jump to the events of this fall and winter that lead to her Bhutto’s and how it all links together with the September 11, attacks. I’ll give you a hint though, it has something to do with this interview that Bhutto had with David Frost of Al-Jazeera English on November, 2007. If you are feeling lazy, jump to 2:14 and listen to what she says…
Yeah you heard that right…
I’ll be posting Part 2 in a few days, depending on my schedule and such….hope you’re intrigued…
We reflect more on the year that was by looking at the story of a comedian, a fundamentalist, a self-proclaimed martyr, a retired soldier, grassroots campaigns, and some audacious hope.
This year holds some very exciting promise. After putting up with a scary, war-mongering, constitution-defying, oil-greedy establishment south of the border, there is finally a chance for it to change.
While the election is still a solid 11 months away, there has been no shortage of drama already in this very wide-open race. At the start of the year, it seemed destined to be a Hilary Clinton against either John McCain or Rudy Guiliani, now a short while later and that remains in question.
On the Democratic side of things, we have seen the rapid rise of Barack Obama and a fairly strong surge by John Edwards. At the end of the day though, I think that Obama really is going to be the one to pull ahead. The man is just too good of a speaker, and is putting forward too strong of a message to be ignored. There is a certain appeal in an Obama-Edwards ticket, if for nothing else than potential sitcom moments that a black guy and southerner tandem possess. Saturday Night Live would have a field day with those two running together.
Of course, joining the Democratic candidates was comedian Stephen Colbert, whose satirical campaign came very close to reality. He planned on running in his home state of South Carolina, and garnered incredible support, including the fastest growing Facebook group in history. However, the South Carolina Democratic executive council voted against his nomination. It’s too bad, because him running could have made things very, very interesting.
On the Republican end there seems to be a far more open field. There is once again the man that was blatantly robbed in 2000, John McCain, who is joined by former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, and a cast of relative new comers to the world’s eye. With the “Back to Basics” message coming from Senator Ron Paul that seems to be gathering a very large grassroots movement, and the “Trust in God” message coming from Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, being the two most interesting.
Huckabee seems to be gathering all sorts of momentum, especially among the evangelical-right that helped put Bush into power. I would not at all be surprised to see a Huckabee-Obama showdown, in a truly monumental and epic presidential race. We would see the first African-American candidate, promising change, go up against a Southern Minister who has associated homosexuality with necrophilia at one point. Make no mistake about it, this is a very important year for the course of the United States, and therefore the world. We should have a lot more to reflect on in one year’s time.
a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.
2.
a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, esp. one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements.
Today Federal Environmental Minister, John Baird, announced that Canada will not withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, just days after the government declared the targets unreasonable in the most recent throne speech.
This is pretty much a polar opposite of Harper’s 2004 campaign promise to opt out of Kyoto, and his 2002 letter to supporters where he called Kyoto a “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations”. Now of course in the past few years Al Gore and friends have done a remarkable job of putting the environment higher up on people’s consciences, so slamming the only reasonably valid pro-environmental legislation is not the best political move anymore.
This is another fantastic example of Stephen Harper’s remarkable ability to speak out of both corners of his mouth. He is a master at keeping his word to the letter, but defying it in spirit. You want us to keep Kyoto? Sure we’ll do that! We just won’t follow it. You want us to lower the GST? DONE! We’ll just raise income taxes so we’ll take the same amount of your money! You want us to stay out of Iraq? Anything for you! Only we’re going to up our forces in Afghanistan so then the Americans and Brits can send more forces to Iraq. You want us to face up to any allegations of government scandal you report on? That sounds great! But we’re just going to limit the amount of contact the media can have with the government so you won’t be able to hear about any of it in the first place.
In many ways, this government is like Jafar from Aladdin. Always giving the people exactly what we say we want, just not what we really want. In many ways we’ve just been teleported underwater to be near a sunken treasure. You know, I’d rather be straight out lied to as opposed to this half-assed attempt at truth.
I’m sure by now everyone out there has heard about the horrible crackdown going on in Myanmar right now. In response to the Junta’s harsh methods, an activist group has started one of the oddest forms of civil activism ever conceived.
Apparently, in South East Asia, there is a superstition that if a man comes into contact with women’s underwear that he will loose all of his power. As such, there is a group of concerned females who have starting sending their underwear to embassies of The Union of Myanmar all over the world in an effort to get them to change their policies.
I think that it is a pretty creative approach to guerrilla-peaceful protest and if the superstition went both ways (or if I wouldn’t get such odd looks every time I walk into Victoria’s Secret) I would send them some old pairs of my boxers right now! So if you are in possession of women’s underwear, and feel like sticking it to THE MAN, or maybe are just finding a good excuse to go commando, here is the address to the embassy in Canada.
And if you happen to be somewhere else, a full list of their embassies is available at http://www.uniteam-travel-myanmar.com/embassies.html. (EDITOR’S NOTE: For some reason the hyperlink function is not working, just copy and past the link to your browswer, the old fashion way)
So ladies, drop your drawers, and let freedom reign!
The other day I posted about Iran. I don’t have a ton more to say here, I just wanted to post some videos of Ahmadinejad’s speach in Columbia.
First off, we have the introductory speach made by the President of Columbia, certainly not the most welcoming remark….
Secondly, here is a brief excerpt of Ahmadienjad’s speach, where he makes some pretty valid point about the US’s record in the Middle East supporting both Hussein and the previous leader in Iran. Certainly some interesting food for thought…
Citing two unidentified sources, Newsweek said former Cheney Middle East adviser David Wurmser told a small group several months ago that Cheney was considering asking Israel to strike the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz.
A military response by Iran could give Washington an excuse to then
Does that scare the crap out of anyone other then me? The same people who brought you a phony made up war in Iraq are looking to extend their forces even more and go right into another Middle Eastern country, only this time with potential nuclear consequences. Thankfully the Israeli government has yet to take up the Vice President on the offer.
I guess one should take solace in the fact that the leaders of the free world are able to learn from their mistakes, the last time that they tried a pre-emptive strike it did not work out according to plan so this time they need to retaliate. So congrats Cheney, you were able to live and learn. Hopefully you also learned how not to shoot someone in the face…hopefully….
The US and EU have been saying repeatedly that they want to try the diplomatic approach with Iran, although they have been doing a lot of sabre rattling recently. Including some tough talk from previous Dove-nation France, which shows that maybe Sarkozy-Royal may have been one of the most important elections of the 21st Century.
Now if diplomacy truly is the West’s weapon of choice here, then I find it interesting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming visit to the United Nations is being met with such protest in the United States. He plans to speak at Columbia University, where the school’s President plans to press him on issues such as Human Rights and Holocaust Denial, this opportunity for debate seems to be overshadowed by intense public backlash.
Also, he had planned to lay a wreath at Ground Zero in New York, but many politicians said that his visit would “violate sacred ground”. I find it absolutely crazy that he would not be allowed to visit the site of the attacks, and politicians saying that he should not be allowed to go totally confuses the issue. Remember, just like Hussein, Ahmadinejad had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks. So wouldn’t him laying a wreath at the site be a huge symbol for co-operation and understanding between two nations poised for war? Is that not what diplomacy is all about?
I am not trying to defend the man is very clearly a megalomaniac, has a horrible record on human rights and has spouted off some of the least informed opinions on the planet. For the record that sentence was about Ahmadinejad and not Bush, I’ll forgive your confusion.
My point is that if people are going to preach diplomacy then please practice it. In searching for a compromise sometimes you have to be willing to give as well as take. That could mean giving someone an opportunity for open debate or a chance to try and heal some old wounds.
So our good buddy Stephen Harper has been saying that the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan has an expiration date of 20 months as we will be leaving in February 2009. While this sounds all well and good that our troops will be out of danger, I can’t help but wonder.
Stephen Harper is not a stupid man, he knows that the Canadian Military is stretched too thin right now, and will be getting even thinner as time goes by and the caskets keep coming home. Also, he knows that this is an unpopular mission (note: it’s not a war) and so announcing it has an end will help him in the poles. I just warn you, don’t get too relieved for our troops right now, they certainly are not in the clear.
The date of February 2009 struck me as an interesting one to say the least. I find it interesting because of what will be happening three months before that, a US election.
We all know that the biggest swing state this time around will not be Florida or Ohio, it will be Iraq. I think that it’s very likely that whoever wins the election down south will be calling an end to “Bush’s War” and the US could be leaving Iraq in the next couple of years.
What does this have to do with anything you ask? Well after the US leaves Iraq there will be a massive humanitarian crisis that follows. The region will be pretty badly destabilized and in need of massive amount of aid and peace keeping. This my friends, is where our great nation comes in. We do have a huge peace keeping force and a desire to please our neighbour to the south.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I fully expect Canadians to send troops to Iraq to help clean up that mess after the US either leaves or reduces their forces. Since we can’t complete two unpopular and dangerous missions at once, we will have to pick and choose, and I guess the Afghan people are playing the part of the fat kids in gym class right now.
ə